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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25345399">The Crawling Rot</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zai42/pseuds/Zai42'>Zai42</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Like Colors, If Colors Hated Me [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast), The Magnus Archives (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Bees, Body Horror, Living Hive, Other, Oviposition</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 06:34:49</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>328</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25345399</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zai42/pseuds/Zai42</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Do you hear their song? The sweet call of the things that would make you their home? Don't you love them enough to give them that?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Hamid Saleh Haroun al-Tahan/The Corruption</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Like Colors, If Colors Hated Me [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1821226</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>36</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Crawling Rot</h2></a>
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    <p>All around him it buzzed, and Hamid could feel it in his back teeth, more a sensation than a sound. If he opened his mouth, he thought he could taste it - thick like honey and ten times as sweet, so sweet it would make him sick. He licked his lips.</p>
<p> The things inside him squirmed, and every one of his nerves was alight with it, a hyperawareness of the crawling sensation beneath his skin. On top of him, pressing his face down into the papery floor of the hive, the queen buzzed and twitched and Hamid felt something slick and gelatinous pulse its way out of her and into him, stretching him, and he moaned weakly. He had been screaming, earlier, but that has stopped. One hairy leg caressed Hamid’s cheek.</p>
<p> Inside him he could feel the things she had laid moving, making themselves a hive in his body - it didn’t make any sense, anatomically, and he had wondered about that at first. Wondered if they were eating him up inside, chewing out pathways from his belly into his veins up to his skull, making him a honeycomb. He couldn’t feel it if they were; perhaps they had reached his brain already and had rewired him. It might explain the buzzing. He wondered if they had hollowed out his bones to protect their soft bodies.</p>
<p> He wondered if they would kill him.</p>
<p> The queen brushed away his tears, lowered her bulk onto his back and hummed low and deep, and Hamid clawed at the thin membrane beneath him; honey and blood welled up where he split it open. Another pulse inside him, thick and heavy, and Hamid groaned, his body aching with the thousands of little lives stirring in him, each one buzzing and moving and shaping him into something to protect them, a fortress, a sanctuary.</p>
<p> He sobbed, and something crawled out from between his teeth to settle on his lips, buzzing high and sweet like honey.</p>
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